Obama's Village in Kenya

Barack Obama's mother is from Kansas, but his father was from Kenya. Here is a video from one of the times when he has gone to visit them.

Our time has come. Our movement is real and change is coming to America.

Senator Barack Obama's campaign for the American presidency has generated excitement the world over.

What began as a whisper in Springfield has swelled to a chorus of millions calling for change. It's a chorus that cannot be ignored. A chorus that cannot be deterred. This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different.

So different in fact that candidates close family members are not watching in New England or in Texas, but from here in the west of Kenya.

He's a beacon of hope. He's got all that it takes to become the president of the United States. "Yes we can!"

Sahid Obama is the presidential hopeful's uncle. He's been watching his famous nephew's progress from the town of Kazumu and he has nothing but pride for Barack's achievements.

I feel so great. It was a wonderful speech.

To show me Obama's roots, Sahid takes me to the Obama family home just across the equator. It's in this sleepy rural village of Kagelo that some of the presidential candidate's closest family still live.

You are heading into Mama Sara's house. A family picture taken in 1992. That's when he visit for the second time. And there as well you can see me standing next to the senator. The senator? The presidential candidate. There we are.

Senator Obama didn't grow up here but it was the home of his father: Barack Obama Sr., a graduate of Harvard University and a respected economist. They became estranged early in his son's life.

Now we are approaching the grave of senator Barack Obama's father. This is where the remains of Senator Barack Obama's father were buried.

Can you tell me just a little bit about him?

Yeah, Barack was a very loving person, very intelligent. Though he died when I was still very young, but my memory of him is that he was a very intelligent person.

Barack Obama first came to visit his father's grave back in 1987.

It was his first time in Kenya. I can say it was kind of happiness mixed with some sadness because he was person who was coming to see this side of his family and at the same time he was coming to see where his father was buried.

Another Obama still living in the village is Barack's grandmother, known as Mama Sara. She too has poignant memories from Barack's first visit. In her house, one photo has pride of place: a young Barack Obama carrying a large sack of vegetables that Mama Sara was bringing home.

(Subtitles on video)

Since then, Senator Barack Obama, has been back only a few times. Mama Sara doesn't speak English and her grandson's knowledge of the local language is limited to masawa, or "how are you?" Even so, there is a strong attachment between the two of them.

(Subtitles on video)

The presidential candidate's grandmother leads a simple life, tending this small plot of land, feeding her cows and chickens, and raising a handful of adopted children. But even though she is a world away from the pressure cooker of Washington politics, Mama Sara has had the inside running on Senator Obama's lofty ambitions.

(Subtitles on video)

While we're talking a group of international journalists arrive and Mama Sara becomes the star of an inpromptu photo shoot. She's hoping that if Barack wins the presidency, the focus will move away from her and what her grandson might be able to do for Kenya.

(Subtitles on video)

A president Obama may or may not be able to deliver on his grandmother's wish list, but even so he is already being commemorated. Behind the Obama's plot is the local school, renamed in the Senator's honor after his last visit. Education facilities here are primitive, but it provides these children with their best shot at a better life. Isaac Kenya wants to become a doctor overseas. He knows that won't come easily, but he's been inspired by Barack Obama.

I think that if Senator Obama will win the presidency, then when I am going to sit for my examination this year, I know that I'm going to excel in my exams and if possible I will study abroad.

The tiny town of Kagelo offers few opportunities. Many people here are idle from lack of employment. It's so quiet that the sound of a sewing machine drives me over to Leonard Ladier, the town tailor. Leonard met Obama at the local church and he has a high opinion of the Senator as well as high hopes.

(Subtitles on video)

God's will and Barack Obama are two things that come up a lot in conversation's around Kagelo.

(Subtitles on video)

The family's devout Christianity is no small irony given that one of the dirtiest tricks of the election campaign so far has been the attempt to depict Barack Obama as a closet Muslim. Despite the innuendo, Obama's campaign is still growing strong.

We will put a college education within the reach of anyone who wants to go.

Sitting down with Sahid to watch his nephew on television, I can't help but be a bit
amazed at how far Barack Obama has come. For Barack's relatives, his success is clearly the result of a humble ancestry.

I think about one to some extent has made him what he is today. He is somebody who has had to fight to become what he is. He coming from a multicultural background, multireligious, multiracial, and I think that one has done quite a lot to put him where he is today.

Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!
Thank you Chicago. Let's go get to work. I love you.

Read more!

Amazing African Animals

This week Shirley talks with David about the wildlife in Kenya, Africa and the some of the environmental problems. Here's an amazing video from Kruger National Park in South Africa.
This is one of the most popular videos ever posted on YouTube. Over 38,000,000 people have watched this video.



Read more!

The Dark Side of Chocolate (Part 2)

Double click on any word to see the meaning.



In part 2, we'll look at the real price of cheap chocolate...
Children soaked in dangerous chemicals.

Etienne Babila survived two years of hard and hazardous labor in the cocoa plantations of Southern Camaroon. At 12, he was taken out of school and put to work to feed his sick parents. Now, back at school and captain of the football team, he's been given the chance of a new life but only if he can leave his village to go to secondary school.

Oway, like most villages here, relies on cocoa. It began as a forced labor camp 100 years ago when Camaroon was a German colony. Outside each hut is a hard square for drying cocoa beans. Over the generations, the labor camp has become a community. It has its own school. Primary education is officially free in Camaroon and the health clinic. But when the price of cocoa collapsed a few years ago, so did the wages of the cocoa workers. Families were forced to sell their children to the farms.

A pioneering projects by the U.N.'s International Labor Organization has begun to document the extent of child labor. Well over a quarter of a million children in the 5 main cocoa producing countries of West Africa. 200,000 of them in Cote D'Iviore alone. Tens of thousands here in Camaroon. A quarter of child laborers are illiterate. The ILO project has also documented the dangers. Machete cuts, young bodies crippled from carrying massive loads, poisoning by pesticides. Parents and farmers are aware that the chemicals are toxic but these children are given no protective clothing, apparently no advice on how to avoid exposure to the spray. We were asked not to identify the children or the farmer they were working for.

Julius Fomboh run a development agency which has been working with the child labor project. He asks Etienne to show him the pesticides the children use.

"What is this?"
"It is Gamelin 20?"
"Do you know what Gamelin 20 is?"
"Yeah, it is used for spraying."
"Did anybody ever tell you that it was dangerous to use?"
"Yeah, my father told me that if I am using it that I should be very careful because it is poisonous."
"It is poisonous. And when you are using it, do you use anything to protect yourself to cover..."
"How old were you when you started using the Gamelin 20 spray?"
"Around 12 years to 13 years.

Gamelin 20 contains the insecticide Lindane, a potent organic chlorine. The makers say that used in accordance with their instructions, it should not cause problems. But those instructions include wearing a mask to avoid contact with the eyes and clothing to protect the skin. An overdose and cause permanent nervous damage. Children are more sensitive to its effects.

"When you use the Gamelin Spray, do you feel some itchiness in your eyes?"
"Yes. It's very stinky."
"Very stinky. When you inhale it, it's stinky. So when you do that, what do you do? When you go home, what happens?"
"Just (????)"

He mixes Gamelin with a powder, a fungicide called Ridimil. This is officially classified as moderately toxic. The makers, Advartis, say users should wear gloves, a face mask, boots, and protective clothing. Etienne has none of these nor do any of the other children we filmed spraying the trees. Julius is shocked.

"Etienne, this is very, very interesting because I've read about this, heard about this but I've never had the chance to see it happen. A small young man, a child actually, spraying, I think its surprising for me. How do you feel in doing all this?"
"It's difficult but we do it just to earn a living."
"So you are doing it just to earn a living. That's really, really, really serious."
"Have you seen other children doing this? In other farms around the area working like this?"
"Many children are doing it."
"Can we say there are up to 100?"
"Yes."
"100 childremn, more than 100 children in the farms doing this."

The ILO estimates that more than 152,000 children are employed spraying pesticides and Camaroon, Nigeria, and Cote D'Ivoire.


Read more!

The Dark Side of Chocolate (Part 1)

Double click on any word to see the meaning.



They start young in the West African cocoa farms. This girl who has been put to work clearing weeds with a machete, Cutlass (?), she's just 5 years old, one of tens of thousands of child laborers here in Camaroon.

Etienne Babila survived two years on the farms. He was rescued thanks to a child labor project, run by the International Labour Organization, ILO. Now he's showing Julius Fonboh, who has been working on the project, exactly what he went through.

Click below to read the rest of the transcript...

While many of his friends are still laboring in the cocoa plantations, Etienne is back at school again learning to read and write and now full of ambition. "I think that to be a medical doctor is good. Or, to be a judge. Because, if I be a judge, I will like to judge any parents that is sending children to the farm." "That sounds very, very interesting Etienne."

Etienne was taken out of school when he was 12. Both of his parents were ill. He had to become the family's breadwinner. He was strong. He could earn up to 3 dollars a day in the cocoa farms next to his village. But without an education, this is all he would ever do for as long as he survives snake bites, machete wounds, and most dangerous of all according to doctors, exposure to the highly toxic pesticides used to drench the cocoa pods.

This is Camaroon's main cocoa producing area. One of the site in 5 West African countries selected by the ILO for the first major attempt to tackle to scandal of child labor in the cocoa farms. Most of the world's chocolate is made from West African cocoa and the ILO estimates that nearly 300,000 school age children work in dangerous condition to produce it. For Julius Fomboh, the exploitation of child labor, taking children out of schools to do adults work in hazardous conditions, is a violation of human rights.

"It's really serious, children working on the farms. It's really, really serious. I think it's worse than slave trade because at least adults can protect themselves but children, their response is not like adults."

As he says, it's also economic nonsense. A sound economy can not be built on the back of a child.
"When did you start using the machete in the field?"
"Around 12 years."
"Can we see?"
"How do you get treatment?"
"I go to the house and tie it with cloth, just like that."
"And you don't go to the hospital?"
"No."
"That's very, very sad. Your parents, is it because they have no money to take you to the hospital or they just don't feel that they should take you to the hospital?"
"There was no money."
"What about your hand? You are comfortable when handling...?"
"And the treatment is the same?"
"Yes."

Etienne is showing Julius how the pods are opened, when children appear through the trees with heavy sacks on their heads. There is a distinction between what the ILO describes as child work, helping out with light tasks after school, and the expoitation of cheap labor. As a United Nations organization, the ILO is committed to eliminating child labor worldwide. When the cocoa project began, workers from local organizations, spent time talking to parents and farmers, about what was necessary and acceptable and what was simply, exploitation. In Etienne's village and elsewhere, the committe came to agree that children should stay at school for as long as possible, that they should be protected, and that child labor was not a solution to their problems. Etienne was among the first to be rescued.
"Can you tell me how it happened that you stopped working in the farm and you went to school."
"I was in the house one day when some people came. They said that they are angels. They said that they are fighting for children. Like that they should not be working in the cocoa farm, they should go to school. I told them that I am one of them. So they identified me and I said that I would like to go to school. So then they give me all that I needed and I started going to school."

For Etienne to return to school, his family had to find another way of making money. The solution, with the help of the ILO's cocoa project, their very own restaurant. And this is today's lunch.

"Ok this is stew and about how many people will eat this?"
"20 people."

Rachel, Etienne's mother, was given help by the cocoa project to start the restaurant. She charges 250 African francs, about half a US dollar, for a bite of spicy chicken stew and plantains. 20 customers a day will give her a profit of around 3,000 francs, or 6 US dollars - enough to pay the rent, feed her family, and keep Etienne at school.

Rachel explains that her husbands has suffered from epilepsy since childhood so he has never been able to work full-time though he does brew palm wine which they now sell in the restaurant. When she fell ill, a few years ago, there was no one to provide for the family. Etienne, she says, was the strongest, so it was he who had to go to work.

They had to stop Elienne going to school, she says, so that he could earn money on the farm and support them all. But now she is pleased that she is back in class. I'm very happy with Etienne she says. I want him to go on with further education so that he can be a better person.

I the ILO's child labor project, has succeeded in sending 50 children back to school in this one small village, well over 1,000 throughout Camaroon, and 11,000 in the 5 countries covered througout the project. Etienne is catching up on 2 years of lessons and his teachers say he is doing well writing and speaking English and French - necessities in this bilingual country. He is doing so well, he wants to stay on at school but that is now in doubt. Despite its success, the 3 year project has ended. Far from becoming a judge, Etienne may have to return to the cocoa field.

Read more!